Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Dragons, Rock Like Fuck

The other day, a cab to the airport, driver says, "Too many people have, what you call -- opinions. That's how life works. If you can afford it, you can put your opinions out there."

I guess I can afford it. Tonight's my last night to work on the manuscript of my next book, Sweet Heaven When I Die, to be published next August. It's a collection of essays, some previously published, some not, all of them re-written to comprise, together, some kind of organic whole. Organic like Frankenstein, that is, with a lot of pieces stitched together -- anarchists, Yiddishists, evil twins, Willa Cather, blimps, sunflower disguises, miners, magicians, and a band called the Dragons, with an album called Rock Like Fuck. The original title of the book was Sweet Fuck All, Colorado, after a bar I stopped in on the way to South Park, and it also features a sweet, waif-like New Age healer who believes she's part fairie and likes to punctuate her spiritual statements with the word "fuckin'" because she believes it provides grounding. Not sure what it provides me -- an out, maybe, from all these years of seriousness about fundamentalism and democracy. Thank fucking God, I'm free at last.